


Time and Travel: An Exploration of Steve's Mission

by poisonbite01



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Fix-It of Sorts, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:02:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27373891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poisonbite01/pseuds/poisonbite01
Summary: After I saw Endgame, I felt a lot of emotions. This... concept, this exploration of my emotions and thoughts about what occurred during Steve's journey to restore the time stones, has been floating around in my mind for years now. I'm sharing this just to... just to get it out there I guess? It includes some personal headcanons about stuff that actually shows up in the stories but is mostly canon-compliant. I don't think "yeah Steve has actually been in the marvel cinematic primary timeline this whole time" is canon anyway? Whatever. Enjoy!Related to this fic, somewhat, is a post I made on Tumblr a week or so after seeing the movie, I think? Anyway its here if you want to read it: https://taekwondorkjosh.tumblr.com/post/184544878837/avengers-endgame-lets-make-some-sense-of-that
Relationships: Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers
Kudos: 3





	Time and Travel: An Exploration of Steve's Mission

One year, eight months, twenty four days. Steve spent almost two years bouncing around the timeline, trying to set things right. 

His first stop was in 1970. He came in before he and Tony arrived the first time. He dyed his hair, used makeup and a fake nose to get a job in the Camp Lehigh mailroom, and put the Tesseract and Pym particles back not five minutes after he and Tony took them the first time around. He then took credit for the “prank call” to Pym, and was summarily fired. Then he vanished. 

New York, 2012 was easy AND a pain. All he had to do was appear on the rooftop of the Sanctuary a few seconds after they all left. The Sorcerer Supreme took the time stone, and with a bit of magic and some play-acting he got the Scepter back in the Avenger’s hands. There wasn’t anything he could do about Loki and the Tesseract, though. The Sorcerer Supreme told him not to worry. He’d restored the stones, and that’s really all that mattered. 

When he arrived in Asgard in 2013, he left Mjolnir behind. It was a good thing too: he’d accidentally called Thor’s hammer to his hand instead of his own during the little fight in 2012. He didn’t want to make that mistake again. The Aether he put back into Jane, along with a mild sedative to make it hard to remember her encounter with Rocket. 

Morag 2014 was tricky. He couldn’t do anything about the fact that Gamora, Nebula, and Thanos were gone. All he could do was slip the power stone back into its spot, then head to Vormir. 

Schmidt was… a surprise. Steve understood a bit more about what he was doing at that point. He knew that he was fixing things, and that he couldn’t really mess anything up worse than they already were. They talked for a while. Caught up. Then Steve tossed the Soul Stone into the waters, and its light vanished. It was a surprisingly anticlimactic end to his time here. He’d done it. Six stones, the particles, Mjolnir. All back in their rightful time, in their rightful space. As far as he understood it, there were only three timelines now: The original timeline, the one where Loki escaped with the Tesseract and everyone thinks he impersonated Steve and tried to steal the Scepter, and the one where Gamora, Nebula, and Thanos just… disappeared, never to return. 

He could go back now. He should go back. He has family. Bucky. Clint. Bruce. Pepper. Tony grew up with stories about his dad and Captain America. It seemed only fitting that his kid grow up with stories about her dad and Captain America. A fitting end. 

But… he had one last stop to make… in 1945.

~~~

He appeared in the upper reaches of Canada, six months before he went into the ice. He knew where he came out of the ice, and he spent that time trying to find himself. He lived among a native people for most of that, learning to navigate the ice floes and trying to reach a particular set of coordinates. He knew it wasn’t where he went in, but over those months he learned something unfortunate. The technology did not exist to track his ship as it moved through the arctic waters and ice floes. As nature shifted around the plane, hundreds of miles from civilization, Steve watched the crash happen. He tried to get down and get himself out, but he couldn’t, not if he wanted to go into the ice a second time. There wasn’t time for a second try, that’s for sure, and he wasn’t going to just keep going back. 

He called it in of course. This time, Howard knew exactly where to look. Steve waited another six months, living up there, getting newspapers and news. Eventually… Howard gave up. The technology didn’t exist to track the wreckage, to go in after it, and by the time Howard invented it (he figured three years, minimum), there’d be no idea where it had gone, and he’d have to invent something else. 

Steve didn’t wait any longer. He couldn’t. He’d tried to give at least one Captain America at a chance at the life he’d lost, and had failed. Now he should go home. He didn’t.

~~~

Steve climbed out of the ice and washed up in Norway. He told everyone that he couldn’t remember the last eight months. In fact, he just kept muttering about “The Stork Club, at Eight.” He was pretty good at acting at this point. When they came to find him, Peggy squeezed him so tight it almost hurt, and he cried. Hard. 

He told her of course. A few days after their reunion, they sat down, and he told her everything. Time travel, his new suit, aliens and the infinity stones. He couldn’t give her any proof, of course. She pulled away from him then, shocked and confused and scared. She didn’t talk to him for a month after that. 

He was busy that month though. He burned out every last remaining dredge of Hydra. He knew everyone that had helped it grow in SHIELD the first time around. They didn’t get the chance this time. Zola didn’t get any power, and died three months into a prison stint from a shiv to the throat. They found every hidden Hydra base of power and burned them down. He found Bucky.. He got to keep the arm and the serum enhancements though. Those had already been underway when Steve went into the ice, and he didn’t know where he was until they sent him for reconditioning.They didn’t get to do that to him this time around. 

When he brought Bucky home, Peggy was there for the Debrief. She wanted to talk. They went out dancing, had a nice time, and she decided that… she couldn’t love him like she loved her Steve. He wasn’t that person, but they could be friends. 

Six months into that, she was pulling him into her bed. Steve had always carried a torch for her, and she found this new, slightly-older, wounded Steve to be a kind, likable man in his own right. 

Two years after he climbed from the ice, Steve told Howard, and they concocted a plan. They found Hydra and Nazi experiments discussing replicating the Superserum. They found cloning experiments. No one understood brain chemistry or science, so when they told the world that Steve was a clone of the original Captain America, who was still lost in ice. Steve changed his name to Anthony and went by that. 

Anthony spent decades working to help the world. He very quickly learned that nothing was the same, that was certain. He knew, though, that Thanos would come eventually. The world had to be ready when he did.

He didn’t know enough about Natasha, even after all those years, to save her from her life entirely, but when she showed up, he sent Clint after her. He pulled her out of darkness. 

Bruce had his accident, unfortunately. Anthony didn’t understand it well enough, couldn’t track everything, and by the time the nineties rolled around the world had changed so much. By the time they learned what happened, it was too late. This time, though, Anthony was there to talk the man down. Got him some tips on meditation and focus and a little hypno-therapy to get himself under control. The Hulk was never a monster, not really, just a large, powerful man with an unfortunate set of triggers. 

Howard was a warmer, kinder father to Tony (who was now named after Uncle Anthony), but Tony still grew into an arrogant, brilliant man. He just had his parents and Uncle Anthony and Uncle Buck and Aunt Peggy to keep him in line. Anthony introduced Bruce and Tony early on, and the Hulk/Iron Man duo helped avert more disasters than the Avengers ever did. 

Nothing that happened on Earth affected any of what happened in Space. The only real change was that superpowered heroes and Captain America were a part of Peter Quill’s life as a child. Anthony didn’t know Peter Quill well enough to do anything for the boy. He had no idea that his influence would make Peter’s heroic persona in space just a little less gray, a little more bright. He earned his title of Starlord much earlier. 

The war between the Skrulls and the Kree continues. Anthony knows about Mar’vell and talks to her a bit, keeps her funded. He doesn’t want the same thing to happen, but… it does. The Kree come, Carol Danvers is lost to space. Captain Marvel is born. When she comes back, though, Shield is ready for her, and helps her. The Kree don’t expect Anthony to meet up with Carol and help her fight, but he does. The old man is eighty something now, but fights like a man in his forties with super powers. 

Thor landed in New Mexico. Anthony was there. Thor thought he was Odin in disguise for a bit, but he dispelled that notion quickly enough. Anthony helped him, and when Thor returned home to fight Loki, and the Bifrost was destroyed, Thor was a bit more mature than he had been, even then. 

And then they found The Valkyrie. It was in a different place this time. Howard explained that the development of green energy in the seventies had altered the planet’s atmosphere. It was different from Anthony’s original world. This time… Captain America didn’t come up as easily. He didn’t thaw as readily. He almost died. Steve had to give a lot, but eventually Steve woke up. 

He took it about as well as he did the last time… at first. He climbed out of bed and started asking questions, and this man that looked kind of like his dad and an old man with a metallic arm sitting in some kind of tiny car chuckled and told him to sit down. 

Anthony started with his own life. He described things that only Steve knew, things that surprised Bucky. Bucky then mentioned things Anthony had forgotten, but Steve wouldn’t have. They told him he’d been asleep, frozen in ice for seventy years. Then Anthony told him how he woke up… the first time. For the first time since he’d told Howard, Anthony told him everything. 

Steve didn’t take this very well. In fact, he took a few swings at the old man. He called him a liar, but Anthony managed to demonstrate his own abilities pretty effectively. Then Peggy came in and Steve knew her immediately. She said they’d looked for him. For years they’d looked, but they couldn’t find him. They grieved. They moved on. Anthony had replaced Steve for a lot of people, but not for those closest to him, and they’d missed him. The world knew that Anthony wasn’t the REAL Captain America.

Steve got it after some time alone. Then, they broke the news. Captain America, the real captain America, was back. 

Anthony was 93 years old at this point. He was getting old. He was still big, and strong, and he only looked like he was in his late fifties, but Bucky had a wheelchair and Peggy had started to lose her mind, and he was tired. So… so tired. Steve needed a lot to survive, and Anthony gave as much of his blood as he could, a kidney, and a lung. He gave part of his liver. They pulled bone marrow. In the end, he healed up alright, but the damage was done. Anthony’s regenerative abilities had been stressed too far, and he began to age, and fast. 

Loki came to Earth here, searching for the Tesseract with Scepter in hand, but SHIELD was stronger than him. Anthony, Steve, Bruce, Tony, the Avengers together, stopped him. Anthony was hurt, and he didn’t heal up good this time. He had aged ten years in six months, and he needed a cane now. Bucky went into battle during the Battle of New York too, wrapped up in a prosthetic suit Tony had built, and he didn’t survive. Peggy lived through the battle, but she’d taken a bad hit and wouldn’t walk again. 

Ultron didn’t exist. Zemo failed. Wakanda joined the world, but Killmonger set off bombs and killed King T’Chaka. T’challa took the throne. Hydra couldn’t grow in SHIELD, so they didn’t. SHIELD protects the world. The aether comes to the planet, as it did before. The Avengers don’t divide. When Thanos comes for the stones, he finds the world united. The Guardians of the Galaxy come, the Asgardians, the sorcerers. This time, Thanos is repelled. His armies are decimated. He has nothing. He dies, his dream unrealized. 

However, the world grieves. One hundred and fifty six million people died during the battle. After victory was reached, and the Earth was pulled into the wider universe… 

When Peggy goes, Steve is a wreck, but he and Anthony grieve together. Anthony helps him, and this time… Steve doesn’t fall into his grief. He doesn’t lock his heart in ice. This Steve moves on. Literally. Captain America takes off into space. He leaves the world behind, the world that doesn’t need him, that has other heroes that know how the world works. At least in space, he doesn’t feel bad for not knowing what’s going on. 

Anthony puts on his old suit one last time. It fits him perfectly. He hides it as regular clothes, and he says good bye. Howard had already passed on, but his wife gives a teary farewell. Tony wishes him luck. Bruce cries. Thor claps him on the back and wishes him the best. Natasha… Natasha is tough. He hugs her the tightest, even though they didn’t have nearly the same relationship they did back then. 

The world thinks he died. When his wife passed, when the life-giving sacrifices he made for Steve caught up with him, the world knew it was coming. He even made one last goodbye video, appearing in his grandkids tiktok vid and giving the twins big kisses on the cheeks as he said goodbye. Then he disappeared. 

He went back to his world, and he handed the shield off to Sam. He shook Bucky’s hand and wished him the best. He didn’t explain much more than that. He took the suit back and left it off, said goodbye to Clint and Bruce again, then he sat down in a rocking chair, pulling Morgan Stark into his lap to tell her stories about her dad’s bravery. She didn’t know this old man with the white hair and the wrinkly face and the kind smile, but he looked familiar. She was too young to understand most of the stories, but she’ll never forget the last thing he said to her before he closed his eyes and fell asleep. 

“Never forget, Morgan Stark. Your father was a human being. He made mistakes, and tried to make things right. Sometimes he made things worse. But the only thing we can do in this world with the time we have is try to make things a bit better for those around us. And your father made things a lot better for many people.” 

He slept and she napped too. When Pepper checked on them (as she had every five minutes), she scooped her daughter up and carried her to bed, and when she came back, Steve Rogers had stopped breathing. 

Steve was buried on the same plot as Peggy. He didn’t go in a casket. They just wrapped him in a bag full of fertilizer and buried him with a sapling on top, just like Peggy. The tree grew bigger and stronger than any tree ever had. 

Morgan visited that tree twice a year: once on the anniversary of her father’s death and once on the anniversary of Steve’s death. It was a long time before she fully understood who that man had been, but she could remember that long story in excruciating detail. She knew everything. She felt like she knew her father a bit better. Somehow that story had helped those few years she had with him crystalize into something permanent. 

Morgan Steven Stark was glad for her middle name, and wished she could tell that to her father, and to the man her father had named her after.


End file.
